Two of the three companies that have most lobbied Toronto’s councillors over the past five years are billboard firms. Their interest lies in the surfaces and spaces seen as suitable for advertising.

Astral Media lobbied councillors on 278 occasions on billboard-related issues between 2008 and July 20 of this year, with CBS Outdoors in third place, with 145. The second most active lobbying client was the Canadian Plastics Industry Association with 153 — in large part due to its concern over plans earlier this year to ban plastic bags.

A Star analysis of the 6,421 records stored in the online lobbyist registry revealed that, of the 8 per cent of all registrations that were sign-related matters, activity by Astral and CBS accounted for more than half of them.

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam is alarmed by the number of lobbyists at city hall advocating for more billboards.

“Whether it’s Astral or Clear Channel or CBS, they all try to get through my door,” says Wong-Tam. “But I turn most of them away because I don’t want to add to the visual pollution in the city.”

Wong-Tam says the multi-billion-dollar industry is scarring Toronto’s skyline and detracting from the aesthetic beauty of the city’s neighbourhoods.

“I’ve yet to meet any resident in my ward who benefits financially from a billboard, and who will say, ‘Councillor Wong-Tam, we really need more signs because it’s a great catalyst for economic development and jobs,’” says Wong-Tam.

“I’ve never heard that from anyone except those who are profiting directly from the sign lobby.”

She worries local concerns could be undermined by lobbyists’ interests.

The councillor points to the example of Pusateri’s, the high-end grocery store that hired Sussex Strategy Group, a prominent lobbying firm, to help stop the removal of a valet zone outside the store’s Bay St. location. The store is in Wong-Tam’s ward, but other councillors and Mayor Rob Ford were lobbied.

Wong-Tam says that’s just the way some aggressive lobbyists play the game.

“If they don’t get what they want from me, they will try and work around it through a back door,” she says.

But Ron Hutchinson, a lobbyist with Astral Media, says it’s wrong for people such as Wong-Tam to characterize lobbying as a battle of private interests versus the public good, evil corporations against the public.

“People obviously don’t line up to say ‘Give me more billboards,’” he says. “The reality is that the sign bylaw is so restrictive that there aren’t going to be many more new billboards anyway.”

There are actually more billboards coming down than there are going up, he says.

Hutchinson points to the work Astral is doing that does directly benefit the interests of the public.

“In addition to billboards, we we’re also providing 25,000 pieces of street furniture — benches, bus shelters and waste containers — to the city,” he says. “That’ll provide over $400 million in cash for Toronto, so there’s a huge public benefit there.”

Astral Media signed a 20-year contract with the city in 2007, allowing the firm to sell ads on bus shelters and information pillars in return for providing the street furniture, much of which doesn’t carry advertising.

The data shows that Astral lobbied city councillors 94 times about the street furniture contract.

But Hutchinson played down that figure, saying that in a contract of that size and duration, changes are inevitable.

“Twenty years is a long time,” says Hutchinson. “So it wouldn’t have been reasonable to expect the city to have foreseen all the city’s needs for the next two decades.”

Ultimately, lobbyists get a bad rap, says lobbyist Anthony Cesario.

The billboard company CBS Outdoors is one of his main clients at the lobbying firm Northcliffe Group.

“Billboards are also used in Toronto for amber alerts,” says Cesario. “So if there’s an issue that needs attention, what better way than to notify the motorist with an alert along the Gardiner?”

“So yes, billboards are for promoting the private interests of companies, but there is also some good that comes out of it.”

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